Buddha (Japanese Movie)

This is a film made in Japan in 1961 about the life of the Buddha. The director is well known for his Samurai movies, Misumi Kenji. The normal stories of the birth, upbringing of the prince, marriage, renunciation, Awakening, teaching and passing are included. The film is very well made, and the sets are good, and the film itself is in a good state of preservation. Unfortunately the subtitles are quite poor and are hard coded, so cannot be adjusted. One thing to note is that after the Awakening the Buddha is shown only from a distance, or as a shadow, but never close up in an aniconic touch.

In this version the overarching theme is the conflict between Devadatta (here called Devaduta for the most part) and the Buddha. But Devadatta in this telling is a traditionalist who wants to preserve the old ways of the gods, not a monk who went astray. It starts with Siddhartha defeating Devadatta in the quest for Yaśodharā (Yasudata), which Devadatta eventually takes revenge for by raping Yaśodharā after Siddhartha has left on his quest. This leads to Yaśodharā’s suicide. Devadatta then convinces Ajatasattu (Agasatu) to kill his own father, and intends to set him on killing the Buddha also, while he builds a new temple with slave labour, which will place him as the most powerful person in the land.

Interspersed with these machinations are the story of a child-eating Yakṣa, which is driven away by the Buddha; the story of Prince Kanala who is enslaved and has his eyes put out owing to a lying queen – having heard the Buddha teach, Kanala forgives her and regains his sight; and a story about a slave woman who falls in love with Ānanda, and how Ānanda is saved from being trampled to death by an elephant owing to his devotion to the Buddha.

Devadatta’s schemes are eventually overcome, his temple collapses on top of him, and he falls into the belly of the earth, but thanks to the Buddha’s compassion he is given a way out, and lives on to see the Buddha pass into Parinibbāna.

I am unsure of the sources for most of the material (except the bare outline of the Buddha’s life). It may have been made up “to make a story” by the writers. As far as I know it doesn’t have scriptural support anywhere, but I may be wrong. If anyone knows what it is based on, please leave a comment below.